Txtng is the new email
If you are still using your cell phone only for chatting with your friends, get with the 21st century! According to a new Experian study, cell phones are rapidly becoming the convergence device long sought, your source for Internet, music, photo, GPS and text communications.
The study quoted some interesting data from the Simmons New Media Study. 59% of U.S. cell phone users text, while internationally the number is closer to 2/3, or 1.8 billion people. (If I were looking for a career now, I might take up thumb surgery.) Almost half of U.S. cell phoners use the photo/video feature (and every one of them posts them to Flickr or Youtube). 19% browse the Internet, while 14% game on their cell phones. 5% use GPS, 7% download music, and 3% watch streaming video. Only 2% shop, but 6% do their banking via their cell phone.
I read another article recently that suggested young people were abandoning e-mail in favor of text messages, a notion bolstered by the data in this report that 300 billion text messages were sent in the U.S. last year. It also reported that 65% of all email was spam, vs. 10% of text messages.
I'm about due to renew or move to a new cell phone carrier, and I'm deliberating about what phone would suit me best. If texting is the new email, a full keyboard might be best, and Internet access could come in handy to post to WalletPop while floating in my kayak down some bucolic stream trapped in a traffic jam.
